Charter Changes What's Your Opinion

rhoffman wrote:   One Council Meeting required All Councilmen are bound by Sunshine Laws regarding private meetings. If private closed door meetings were the case and any of you have the proof, please present it to the proper authorities and do us all a favor. Les Landen said he WILL prosecute. The actual issue itself was one of practicality. They honestly don’t need two meetings a month. They can choose to have as many public meetings as they want but are now only required to have one.

Nor should there have been. It is a Charter Committee not a court of law.

Permitting outside hiring of Police and Fire Chief

I voted no for this amendment. We’re not the Wild West, yet! Why wouldn’t we groom our own? All cities are unique and raising these men and women within our community allows them a better understanding of both citizens and criminals. I lost the vote but that my friend is true democracy at work. You don’t always get what you wish for and in this case I didn’t. Conspiracy, corruption? Why not move somewhere that these tricks of the trade could actually do you some good. Good old boys club? Possibly.

 

"Grooming our own" is part of the problem. 98% of the time the child acts just like the parent. Hiring from the outside doesn't mean hiring unqualified applicants. It means putting someone in there with fresh eyes,it means having someone with no ties to council members or others of the department. "Good ole boys club" is exactly what it is. You scratch my back etc,etc,etc. I'm not sure about the conspiracy part but I have no doubts about plenty of corruption. The problem being no one wants a change,except the people on the outside. Council has a way of sprinkling a little sugar on everything and calling it sweet.

Hermes wrote: "Grooming our own" is part of the problem. 98% of the time the child acts just like the parent. Hiring from the outside doesn't mean hiring unqualified applicants. It means putting someone in there with fresh eyes,it means having someone with no ties to council members or others of the department. "Good ole boys club" is exactly what it is. You scratch my back etc,etc,etc. I'm not sure about the conspiracy part but I have no doubts about plenty of corruption. The problem being no one wants a change,except the people on the outside. Council has a way of sprinkling a little sugar on everything and calling it sweet.

Hiring from the outside means you're hiring someone about whom you don't have the same sense of professional history as you have for someone who has been in the department for 25+ years. 

I think it's a mistake to assume someone who has been in the City of Middletown won't have "fresh eyes."  I don't think any of the current command staff would serve in the same way as Chief - to continue with your metaphor, which I don't necessarily agree with but with entertain - parents don't produce identical children (unless you're talking about multiple births); my sister and I were raised by the same parents in the same household, and we are very different people with very different ideas, and I'm sure that's the case for many parents/children, so I don't think your metaphor is a good one. 

I know that the police department invests in training their officers by sending them to seminars, etc. throughout the country.  The point of doing this, it seems to me, is for those officers to bring back those "fresh eyes" through their learning experiences.

You mention an outside person not having "ties" to City Council.  Well, an external candidate will owe his or her position entirely to the City Manager and will not have worked his or her way through the department.  If that's not having "ties" to someone (and essentially working at the pleasure of someone), then I don't know what is.  With an external candidate, I think you run a greater risk of having a Chief of police and/or fire, who is very much beholden to the City Manager. 

I still fail to understand why anyone would object to opening the top cop or Fire Chief job to seek out the best possible candidate, even if that candidate ends up coming from the inside.  There are 100's of job listings for Chiefs on the Net across the country they can't all be doing it wrong.

The final report from the Charter Review Committee can be found here:

 

http://www.cityofmiddletown.org/docs/news/265.pdf